Man at his best.

While we’re watching the signal, if not single, liberal achievement — the BFD, if you will — of the Most Disappointing President Ever™ writhe before conservative jurists like a tasty Christian before so many lions deciding whether merely to rip out the mandate or devour it whole (the Scalia lion is, of course, played by Jeremy Irons and drawling, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”), let’s pause to remember how the Real Democratic Party™ acted when the High Court tossed out a law that was important to their constituents and agenda: They simply passed it again, with a different rationale.

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You with your excuses. You might remember the D’s had a Senate supermajority under this administration and accomplished … how much?

Well, health care reform, for one thing. But in any case, I do think there’s a difference between having the kind of supermajority where you can toss out 15 of your own Senators and still have a filibuster proof majority and having one where you can’t afford to lose any of your Senators at all. And a House majority that nearly triples your opponent? Oof.

As it is, the Dems are unlikely to retrieve the House in 2012 and may lose the Senate. The Supreme Court may well strike down the ACA deliberately to impair Obama’s re-election, which may be the only thing standing between us and at least two years of unified GOP control of the entire federal gov’t … not to mention the opportunity for the GOP to replace outgoing conservative justices with young zealots who will keep the Court reactionary for decades to come.

Well, I for one would like very much if the election results were such that the Democratic Party could pass the same bill again, or even a more liberal one. But it doesn’t seem very likely.

Also, silbey is actually underselling the point: having every single Democratic vote including the ones that somehow manage to get elected from ultraconservative states by triangulating their asses off wouldn’t have been enough, they *also* needed both independents, only one of whom could even remotely (by that point) be described as a liberal. (And that’s not even getting started on the terminal cancer patient…) For practical purposes it was never more than an illusion of supermajority, and that only for moderate goals, not strongly liberal ones.

It seems to me that this discussion overlooks the big question: if the Democratic Party back then was so liberal, how did so many of them get elected? Were the American people massively more liberal than they have been any time since Reagan?

Or maybe the Democrats of the old days were just “liberal” if you looked at them with the right filters, e.g. not really caring about the equality or rights of people other than heterosexual white males. If God Himself came down from heaven and told me that throwing those other groups back under the bus would lead to passing an economically more liberal agenda, I’m not sure I’d take the deal (it sounds more like the kind of offer the devil would make, anyway).

Dude, chill. I’m saying that there’s a difference in law-making between having a 3-1 majority in both houses and having a situation where Ben Nelson is your 60th vote. It surely isn’t the only difference, but it’s worth mentioning.

Which is to say, silbey is saying the difference between then and now is the size of the majority.

I said it had something to do with it; that’s not the blanket statement you’re making it out to be.

Of course it mattered. Likewise, it seems possible the Democrats’ commitment – a commitment with cash value – to aiding the poor and suffering and not worrying overmuch about inconveniencing the rich might have helped give them that majority.

In the brief interval between Franken being seated and Kennedy’s death, there were 60 senators caucusing with the D’s, which meant that they could pass anything that they could get the likes of Lieberman and Nelson to agree to. Not exactly a recipe for enacting a new New Deal.

Okay … I think I get what you’re saying. It’s true I think that Obama, due to his unfortunate desire to govern as a moderate Republican, squandered a chance in 2009 to marshal American populism in favor of a Democratic program. Might’ve worked, might not.

But that’s history now, and the Dems bid fair to turn gov’t back over to the GOP, which after the Dubya disasters is really an amazing turnaround. Certainly there’s a huge hole in the Democratic Party where its heart should be.

But they could have abolished the filibuster, robbing Lieberman and Nelson of their God-given right to be pandered to and giving the pivotal vote to more liberal members . . .

And before you say they would need even more than 60 votes to end the filibuster because it takes 66 votes for rule changes, true. But the only reason that 66-vote rule was in effect during the Congressional session that passed the ACA was that the Senate was bound by the rules of previous Congressional sessions. And all it would have taken for that not to be in effect would have been for the President of the Senate to uphold a 1957 ruling by the then-PotS that incoming Congressional sessions are not bound by the rules of their predecessors. Leaving a simple 51-vote majority requirement for zapping the filibuster.

The President of the Senate is the VP. Biden would have flashed that shit-eating grin and banished Lieberman to the outer darkness the first week if the Administration had let him. Plus, the 1957 VP that created the precedent in the first place?

Nixon. Maybe the worst crime the Administration committed by not pursuing this strategy was passing on the chance to deliver some cosmic justice by forcing Tricky Dick to enable one last piece of progressive domestic legislation from beyond the grave.

Taking what Ben said in a slightly different direction, it’s obvious to me that the problem isn’t Obama but Congress and, above all else, the death of the traditional filibuster. Amend the Senate rules to end the procedural filibuster and force the opposition to stand in front of the American public to fight the passage of, say, free healthcare for 9/11 first responders, and then we’ll see how liberal this country truly is. No more of this, “Congress can’t compromise,” or, “I hate both parties, but I hate the Democrats just a little bit more,” crap.

It’s an error to conflate “the Democrats” with “every single Democratic legislator.” In fact, “the Democrats” vigorously supported ACA, still do, and would have supported improvements such as a public option.

A small subset of “the Democrats” is a big problem, but “the Republicans,” who really do act as a single unit in important matters, are a bigger problem. Nelson and Lieberman were the 41st and 42nd worst Senators.

Such a curious notion expressed in this sentence! The idea that meaningful liberal legislation can be passed today seems so far out of reach as to be impossible. “Liberal” has become such a dirty word; no one wants to stand up for it any more – at least no one who needs votes in order to keep a job.

Ben, they would have had to change the Senate rules at the beginning of the session, that is, before the Republicans demonstrated their commitment to obstructionism. While lots of us guessed what would happen, I don’t think a lot of the party leadership could quite believe that the Republicans would go so far in obstructionism as they did.

It’s true I think that Obama, due to his unfortunate desire to govern as a moderate Republican, squandered a chance in 2009 to marshal American populism in favor of a Democratic program.

I’m not even sure he had a *desire* to govern that way, so much as he realized that given the composition of Congress, it was the only game in town. Some people may run for President genuinely unaware of the limitations of the office, but I think Obama just realizes Presidents aren’t allowed to talk about the limitations of the Presidency because it sounds whiny and defeatist, but actually he’s well aware of how short a lever he has to move the political world.

Also, what erubin said. Blaming the president for the actions and inactions of Congress may be a time-honored pastime, but time is the only thing it’s honored by. Congresspeople are big boys and girls and deserve the credit/blame for their own deeds.

If ithe ACA gets struck down and the Dems pass the it again under a different rationale whats to stop the Supremes striking it down again? At the moment it looks like Scalia is going to contradict what he’s said on other cases to get his desired result so I doubt anything would stop him ruling a new bill unconstitutional.